EnglishCentral: What’s coming. Part II

This continues the first post about forthcoming changes to EnglishCentral – the website that gets students motivated through authentic video and speaking.

EnglishCentral I must admit, is slowly becoming a powerful “video corpus”. Imagine taming the unruly thing that is youtube so that it might be easily used in class. Pull out any grammar term you are looking at in class and watch many examples of it. Or pull out a word and see it used in different contexts in different videos. Scour the billions of lines of speech in the corpus that is youtube and harness that for the betterment of your students (and also for some research – but students first!). I’m happy to admit, the changes in the next release of EnglishCentral bring us to the edge of this reality. Truly. (plus, unlike youtube – no ads!)

More of the changes coming very, very soon on EnglishCentral.

1. Search will become more powerful. Pull up a “video wordlist” and see words used in video context. So don’t just search for a topic or the word in a video but pull up that word (from the 70,000 + now in our video library, word list). Note how you get different video lists depending on the function of that word. You can show students examples in not only different contexts but also of different usage (noun, verb, modifier etc…). Another vocab. change – we now use a headword system. So a word on EnglishCentral is only what we’d call a “head” and the mother of other uses. Soon too, you’ll be able to pull up functions, grammar points, idioms and more….

Note how you get different video lists depending on the function of that word. You can show students examples in not only different contexts but also of different usage (noun, verb, modifier etc…).

Another vocab. change – we now use a headword system. So a word on EnglishCentral is only what we’d call a “head” and the mother of other uses. Soon too, you’ll be able to pull up functions, grammar points, idioms and more….

2. Favorite a video and bookmark it for later “eating”. A great tool. Just click the star on the video and it’ll be in your My English page library! Coming soon – teachers will get this ability – to add on the fly, videos to their classes video curriculum assignments.

3. Get access to all content, no matter your membership level. Yes, that’s right! We’ll always let you sample premium content and have an open ended sampling model. Try it out, get a limited amount and see if you’ll benefit from it!

We are working hard to make EnglishCentral into a place where technology meets practicality. Where video is harnessed and controlled for the benefit of language learners and especially teachers/researchers. This summer we are sweating away in order to make this a reality. We are truly in Star Trek country, the final frontier.